


A Tale Of Kings And Queens (and Prince nobody knew)

by GodOfWar



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Lucifer (TV)
Genre: (just not alone), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Blood, Comforting Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Crowley Created the Stars (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley and Lucifer were friends in Heaven, Crowley is So Done (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley's Questions (Good Omens), Crying, Dark, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Kiss, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, I need to learn how to write side characters but today is not the day, Late For Apocalypse, Lucifer Hung the Stars (Lucifer TV), Lucifer Morningstar Does Not Approve, M/M, Mental Anguish, Misunderstandings, Other, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Past Drug Use, Synesthesia, Temporary Character Death, and then one comes around and doesn't even say hallo, can't believe I'm typing it but, careful with the crown, mostly - Freeform, see how well it turned out, when you think all of your friends have died gruesome death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25738531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodOfWar/pseuds/GodOfWar
Summary: Aziraphale is...gone. And Crowley can do nothing else but follow his last wish and try to stop Apocalypse. Alone.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar (background), Crowley (Good Omens) & Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 229





	A Tale Of Kings And Queens (and Prince nobody knew)

**Author's Note:**

> So, usually I spend weeks agonizing over whatever or not I should post things as they are, but this time, well, the fic was written within two days by accident while I was busy writing a sequel to my other Lucifer/Good Omens story "Brother Mine" and decided, in honor of upcoming new season of Lucifer to just throw it in the wind.
> 
> Kudos give me life!  
> Enjoy!

He doesn't remember what words fell from his lips. Violet eyes narrowed in anger and then in doubt, so it must have been something right. Beelzebub sneers at him and Crowley feels all the better for it and some of the tension bleeds from him when they both disappear. 

He is fucked either way.

And then he knows that the fuckening would come sooner then he expected when his body stiffens against his will, grappled by some ancient instinct…

There is a thing no demon would tell to another and yet all of them know. Being around Satan hurts. And it hurts so much more when some kind of idiot, on his way to be obliterated, goes and pisses him off. Crowley never applied to that position, but apparently he was doing the job just fine.

The pain starts from somewhere inside him that doesn't translate into anywhere on his physical body before it spreads in a pulsing wave. It stops his lungs. Grasps his heart. He slides down like a poppet, legs turned to jelly as the ground rushes to meet first his knees and then his cheek. He hears nothing but white noise, pitched higher then a human ear could register, until he realizes it comes from the below the shaking ground. And then a gulch opens before them, dull- roar cacophony of the tortured souls splitting the air, as immense heat emerged right along the enormous clawed hand grasping the liquidating edge of the chasm. Humans scream and he kind of wishes that he could too, but his teeth are pressed together and his mouth is clammed shut, too busy swallowing the bile that lodged itself in his throat. 

Crowley climbs onto his elbows. Then on his knees. He crawls backward with no shame, as far as he can, before the trembling earth is no longer swaying as wildly as a drunk party-loving uncle on the wedding reception. Something scraps against the concrete when he braces his foot and tries to make his shaky limbs obey and stand up. 

Sword. 

Huh, so that's where it landed. 

Convenient. 

Pretty much useless.

He grabs the handle anyway, tightly, still remembering the shape of a pommel like it was just yesterday he threw his own on the ground and tried to wipe out angel's blood from his hands on the edges of his stained white robe. It fits with nauseating familiarity and stings like a first step on the holy ground. He pulls himself up, braced on that hated beloved thing that was once Aziraphale's and then swings it. There is loud whoosh of magnesium flare as the blue flames encase the heaven-made metal. 

"What is happening? What is that?" There is a small hand grasping the edge of his jacket. He follows it to its owner. Blue scared eyes don't move from the shadow and flame rising toward the sky like a balrog, nearly immaterial and terrifying in its might.

"Your father."

The small human freezes beside him and Crowley's legs decide for him without any impact from his brain. One step forward, one to the left. Here he was, the only thing standing between the end of the world. Between Satan himself and the Prince of Hell. And where, oh where is the Queen? Insane laughter bubbles just under the surface, ready to be released or change into heart-wrenching sobs any moment now and he decided that the uncertain 'later' would be better time for fear- fueled histeria. He is sick with fear. Filled to the brim with dread and his knees are locked so stiffly he won't be able to move in any way that matters.

Everything _hurts._

The shape emerges fully. It's so tall it looks like a seven pronged crown of horns reaches the heaven, brushing the heavy stormy clouds. Massive like a mountain. 

Frankly, fucking ugly. 

Lucifer was beautiful once. No, correction. He was the most gorgeous being Crowley had ever laid his eyes on, before he met...; So lovely, in fact, that everything else paled in comparison regardless of what or who it was. He shined like he swallowed the light from the stars he shaped and had so much charm that, the young thing he once was, Crowley hung on his every word. Lucifer was a friend. Or as much as a God's favorite son can be a friend to a knock-off lonely Virtue. Of one sad little nobody who didn't like the repetitive songs. Got tired of the overwhelming white and gold and silver while there was blacks and purples and vivid reds to be had. Lucifer's (even if he was Samael back then) barely-there-shadow, working alongside the great, stunning Archangel, who loved stars like each came from under his fingers and asked and asked and asked until nearly everybody he knew went away, not wishing to be inconvenienced by the endless strings of _why's._ Lucifer didn't mind, encouraged him really. Called him smart. Funny. Interesting. _Different._

And for a while he felt understood. Appreciated. Less lonely with only his stars at the edge of the universe and swirling restless thoughts for company. For a while the world was right where he was listening to all the ideas that were different and new while his admiration grew. Free to speak, to be listened to. Free to think. 

And to ask.

Up there, when the Heaven was still young and had a polish of silver and mother-of-pearl, he had asked once this charming powerful Archangel why all angels from the lowest malak right to the mighty seraphim were born with swords and spears and maces when there was no one they could fight, alone in the universe as they were. All preparing for an unknown enemy. Sharpening their weapons for the unnamed threat.

It was the only time Lucifer didn't welcome his question but left, discomforted and shaken, straight to a place Crowley wasn't allowed to follow. Up and Up, to the home of the God.

It was one of the few questions he regretted having ever found the answer for.

There was nothing beautiful about Lucifer now. Powerful, yes. Larger then life, quite literally. But if there was any charm, any of that old sweetness left, it wasn't wasted on Crowley after they both hit the dancing blue depths of sulfur lake. Fool that he was, he wished for far too long to be remembered. 

He looked up, staring at the face of once a friend who would now end his life, and never felt less significant, being pinned down by the eyes where the iris itself was probably bigger then he himself was. Satan leaned closer, elbows pulverizing the layer of concrete, claws scrapping so close to Crowley he could feel the vibrations of the pulse...and then that towering fallen Archangel blinked at him with peculiar expression. Like he had found a little bug swimming in his glass of wine and got curious enough to watch it struggle to the surface. That's what he was, wasn't it? A bug. One tiny insignificant demon out of ten million, on the bottom of the ladder. Barely above janitor. And standing on the path of a giant with one flimsy sword held in a burning, bleeding hand and fueled by memories, wishful thinking and could-have-been's.

"Crowley."

"My king." And Crowley found that even when his entire body felt frozen in place and trembling from the tension, his voice was even and low and didn't broke once. 

"You'd rebel against me."

And once again his mouth rushes to run ahead of his brain, instead of keeping itself shut.

"I rebelled against God, don't feel so special."

Well, at the very last he would die with cool last words.

Lucifer takes off his gaze from him and it shouldn't feel so insulting, but it kinda is. Crowley promptly tells his ego to kindly shut up and enjoy still breathing in and out. Crowned head sways as The Adversary surveys their small gathering. Four innocent kids. And two younglings that are just dipping their toes into adulthood. There is of course Crowley himself with a large gaping angel-sized absence by his right side that acts like a black hole, sucking up the particles he is made of one by one, draining him like a leech from the inside. There is no victory to be had. The only thing he might count on is a sliver of dignity, dying with sword in hand instead of his knees. 

And then the Antichrist hiding behind his back decides that sanity is overrated and comes up from his left. Soft fingers slip into his, their hands tangle on instinct alone as the short silhouette plasters himself to his side.

"You are not my dad. Dads don't come eleven years late like that and can't tell you what to do or don't do." 

Crowley suffers from a minor heart attack. But it's fine, it's all fine. Can't kill somebody who is dead, yeah?

It's not fine. Lucifer leans forward, his gargantuan head so close he could see individual dots in those flame-red eyes, warm sulfury breath coming their way, mussing both hair and clothes.

"Quite."

"Wot?" The world stops to a standstill as Satan's lip twitches upward in a half-smile.

"Let me admit something to you. I dare to say that it won't matter much if you'd be the one to know this." Hand reaches closer, turns, palm open and exposed and lightly angled so the claws are further away and there is two feet distance between Crowley and the first knuckle of forefinger. He could just swing. Swing and chop it whole like it's nothing, like a particularly large and scarred maggot. And then he doesn't. "I was sitting in my penthouse in LA with my fiance before a rain of smelly trouts hit the balkony and then I found myself here…wherever here is, looking like a stripe of overcooked beckon with horns…what is with those horns, anyway? Not to mention you, tiny urchin, claiming that there is possibility of any relation between us," he swings his red gaze and once again gives Crowley his full attention,"and you with a Dad-damned flaming sword. So, Crowley, I would be glad for some explanation. "

Crowley sits down. Not entirely out of his own free will, more because the crushing sense of pointlessness hits him so hard his legs just folded underneath him and made him slide hard on the overheated ground. Sword clattered on the ground, extinguished, at his side. His hands traveled up out their own will, covering his face as the breath hitched in his chest.

"You don't _know_."

"Yes, we already established that…"

"No! _you_ don't know. Which means that if you didn't know it was all a farce. A play. Nothing about it was real or…or planned. It was never meant to happen." He was screaming at Satan. Or maybe in a general direction of him. He wanted to wrap his hands around the throat of the person responsible for this horrible cosmic joke and watch as the life bleeds from their eyes. Instead, he falls on his back, arm over his eyes, burned dusty material of his jacket soaking the helpless tears. And then he explains, voice listless and wooden and echoing in his head like it came from vibrant darkness of the universe. He shuts up after barely three sentences that summed up eleven years of pointless devastating grief and fear and chokes up, unable to say more through his tears. Stripped to the bones from all of his pretenses.

He wished to take those stupid ugly feelings and bury them all in a shallow grave.

Alongside himself.

There was talking, but none of the words translated, a background noise he couldn't hear through the way his heart cracking into pieces in overwhelming wave of agony. There is touch. Flash of red. Movement. He rolls onto his side, trying to curl himself up around the blinding pain in his chest when he registered that the surface he is lying on was gently pulsing. He raised his head and wished he hasn't.

He was cradled in Lucifer's open hand.

"Oh, you're awake. Are you…functioning?"

He took stock of himself. He was…breathing. And comprehending. It will have to be enough.

"Crowley? I am…I am sorry for your loss."

And there goes the breathing.

One enormous knuckle lightly grazed his side in repetitive movements and something in him broke further at the thought that he was consoled by a creature that was universally thought as as 'true evil'. He remembered him as impulsive, childish, dismissive. Occasionally insensitive, but still good and honest and sweet. And yet Crowley wished that Lucifer wasn't trying to comfort him, because there was a thousands of years deep chasm since the Archangel cared about him in any way and yet his chilled touch-starved body didn't get a memo. 

"I promise you I will find those responsible for this horrid crime and they will be punished." Crowley made himself move then, sitting cross-legged and trying hard not to think of frumpy angel sloshing wine as he fretted over gorillas and the size of a Kraken and and "Sound of Music" in the muted light of a bookshop while the rain hit the windows and the world seemed to have an expiring date.

"Hastur and Ligur were the ones who gave me the basket with a baby…"

"You delivered him?" Crowley nodded, not trusting his voice. He looked around to see that the children and book girl with her stick of a man were still there, listening to every word, barely few meters away from where he sat curled in the palm of gargantuan hand. He wondered why he was picked up. Who put him there? Why in the world was he covered in red plastic raincoat?

"You knew me as a baby?" He hummed at the question, dark and quiet thoughts crawled in his brain, thoughts of how fragile that little baby looked and how easy it would have been to kill it and how he wished he was any better demon and just wring that neck, fake the delivery and avoid the whole Apocalypse altogether. He swallowed them down.

If he was that kind of person, he would have never knew how truly uncomfortable is the sofa in the back of that one particular booshop in Soho, London, and that was...unimaginable.

"We meet on a bloody cemetery, they brought you in a picnic basket. You slept through exactly half of the way and then wailed like a air-raid siren for the rest of it. "Crowley coughed in his hand, his voice still rough and scratchy as he quietly confessed. "Somebody impersonated you, my king. Talked through the radio in my Bentley. It sounded exactly like you...but like you when you talk to someone you want to slowly grill over single candlelight over the space of few centuries. They told me…told me _explicitly_ , that if anything at any point goes wrong I will be the one paying for it…"He wasn't, was he? Not yet. But someone already had. Someone had and in every possible scenario Crowley envisioned, that was not an outcome that ever crossed his mind. More fool he." I went into small hospital in Lower Tadfield, stone throw from here, got in, handed the basket to Sister Mary Loquacious and hightailed to…to…I just wanted to fix this. But it wasn't fixable…"

"And yet, here we are."

He doesn't know what to say. He sits, bowed down with the weight of the crushing loneliness that climbs on his shoulders with no regard for his cracked heart and scrambled mind. No thought of how much his hands shake. He wants to go home. Go home, drink enough to forget and sleep so deep that he will never wake up in the world where Aziraphale isn't there.

"So, Hastur and Ligur. It has Beelzebub little flies all over the scheme. But who else?"

"Dagon has to know," it comes out as little more then a whisper, "but I don't know how much. She is the Lord of Files, so every report would first go to her. I imagine there is little that go past her."

"That's at least something to go on. I need to be going. Chloe is probably gauging circles in my parquet and I'm late for work. Go home, rest. Eat something, Dad, you weight next to nothing." Hand is tipping gently and Crowley makes himself slide on the patch of concrete, swaying on his feet. He looks at Lucifer and thinks of fluffy crepes and sushi and feels sick enough he has to put his hand to his mouth to stop himself from vomiting all over his shoes. "I will book you a plane and see you in LA on Tueseday." That…that is something. He can do something. Looks easy enough to not fall apart while trying." Ah, I'm afraid you have to take care of the...affects. I can't take them with me to Hell. "

Crowley scowls at the items scattered around him. Lucifer's hand comes from his left and somehow those enormous talons menage to grasp the crown. It's the same crown that once sat on Samael's head long before the Fall was a thing and then got thrown after him only to land, twisted and warped first in Hell, then find itself on Earth. Crowley feels its weight when the piece of tarnished silver lands atop his sooth-y sweaty hair. He stumbles forward, catching himself on the broad expanse of Lucifer's finger as the crown does _something_ , rendering him blind for short moment as memories that were not his own slid inside his brain. He tried drugs, once, somewhere in the early seventies. Mixed himself the kind of 'acquired taste' blend that would kill a man and rot his insides faster then holy water melts the demon, but was supposed to be pleasing. If someone was sitting down and taking notes to replicate the effect - they got it down perfectly. He was higher then Heaven. He feels…less tired. Rejuvenated. Full of maniac energy that keeps pulsing hard within him so loudly he hears the hum of it in his ears. There is a warmth swimming in his chest and crawling in his belly and then he could swear he smelled all the colours of the light spectrum every time he stuck out his swollen forked tongue out of the corner of his mouth.

Gravitation, Crowley thought, has stopped being a thing. He was floating in the space, fingers tingling madly and… who needed feet anyway?

Eternity slid over his bones, slipping under his skin till it nestled itself inside. And then it exploded and the universe opened its wast starred maw and swallowed him whole.

It was exquisite.

It was excruciating.

And then he crushed down far too soon and was left gasping, clawing weakly against the rough red skin as the world kept trying to right itself.

"…ot him that crown!"

"I didn't know it supposed to do that?"

"What it did, anyway? He kinda looks done for."

"Wens!"

His head hurt. And the argument didn't help. But…the strangest thing, otherwise? He felt alright. Not only alright. Great, even. He had so many old pains, scars that weren't visible on his corporation, those that pulled and froze up or got his coils locked up in a painful position that took ages to unfold from…but those were gone. The warning sensation that settled in his mind just after the fall, the one which kept him from fully changing out of his human form with flashing red light that screamed of awaiting agony…no longer bothered him. And the thumping slow agony of being next to a King of Hell? Non-existent. Whatever Lucifer's, (Pollution's?) crown did it healed all the little spaces which worn him down over millenia, even those he had long forgotten about.

He startled when bony hands wrapped themselves around his torso, but allowed himself to be lowered to the ground. 

"It really isn't your day, is it?"

Crowley sat there contemplating for a while till eyes finally obeyed him enough to focus on something that didn't belong to eleventh…(or was it twelve already?) dimension. Book Girl crouched beside him in her loose skirts, poking and prodding him with an obvious inexperience of first-time Apocalypse survivor. He didn't mind much. It's not like he knew what to do any better then her. He started climbing on his feet once again. She did a strange little dance with her arms like she couldn't decide if she should push him down or help him stand up and ended up doing nothing much beside landing on her ass when he nearly headbutted her.

He stuck his hand and she grasped it and it took him a moment to sludge through melasa-thick thoughts to finally tug her up instead of just looking at shimmer of light reflected in her glasses. 

Lucifer kept watching, mostly ignoring the argumentative little girl that looked on the verge of deciding if she could get away with kicking him and two boys who were nervously trying to get her away. His maybe son was just amused, and the more he thought about it the more he noticed the family resemblance. 

Drat. 

Crowley looked drunk and even less coordinated then normally, but the fact he was finally moving on his own power was enough to assure him that the brain under the mop of sweaty red hair was not entirely scrambled.

He didn't knew that his old crown was able to do anything at all beside look pretty. But he felt something respond the moment he placed it on Crowley's head and the whole problem lay in the fact he had no idea what it meant for any of them. He needed to go. There were whole legions of Hell all prepped up to fight in Armagedon that will not happen, damn it, and that mean problems only started piling up. He doesn't even want to know how many unanswered calls his cellphone is sporting now, because one was one too many and the scolding he will get…

He watches as Crowley pokes the red cape to free his movements somewhat and picks up the sword, bleeding on the pommel before taking off his thin silky scarf and tying it around few times and attaching that cumbersome shape to his belt. He slides his fingers under the scales an heaves them up with some problems, forged to be handled by Famine only, they make him list to the side. All three items weight him down, because he was never meant to be a person to carry them. He is bowed down and limping with the burdens of divine and infernal and undoubtedly human nature and Lucifer purses his lips as he watches him stumble. Will he see him in few days? Or will he be met with silence and come back to the Old World searching for that little shaky demon and find only cooling body wrapped protectively around the sword that keeps hurting him but obviously means something more to him? He promises himself to work fast and to look for a way to dispose of those bothersome things before anyone else would get hurt.

It's high time to pay Beelzebub a visit and then dive down straight into bottom of this clusterfuck. He moves, reality sliding into place, swallowing up any and all hints that he even existed on this plane in this form. He chances one last look at the strange group and chokes on ash even as he continues his descend to Hell. Because there, against all expectations and memories of carnage and wings disappearing under the lake of sulfur never to appear again, stands a fallen angel. _Another_ fallen angel. His red hair is getting pelted with the first drops of rain as the pair of large impeccably groomed wings slide from other dimension brushing the ground before they raise in the air and protect the humans from the drizzle. Adam dives as close to him as he can get, a son that Lucifer didn't remember having, hand slipping into Crowley's own as the man puts the scales in his bleeding hand to make space for the kid. They all make their way out of airfield - six humans, fallen angel and the mutt of a hellhound, all hidden under the gentle shade of black feathers. 

And all the little hints, the strange familiarity in the way that Crowley kept projecting his feelings with his entire face and after initial scare didn't even thought to distrust him. The open vulnerability that no Lilim, beside perhaps Mazeekin on her bad day, would ever show. The grief of love lost, palpable to anybody with working set of eyes. The comment…oh, he should have connected the dots earlier, he said it himself, didn't he? 'I defied God'…He defied God and paid the price.

Crowley was Kokabiel, _Lucifer's_ Kokabiel…

He had just put a crown on a fallen angel.

He put a crown on a friend.

Dear Mum, he needed a drink.

Putting one feet before the other was the best plan Crowley ever had come up with. It worked splendidly. No complications on this front. One leg raise, rest it on the ground, then lift the other and somehow he was getting places. While most of his corporation and true form felt just splendid, he was aching in ways that are new and not, but persistent like an toothache when you slide your tongue and prod the wound in mindless moves over and over and over again. He stopped his heart. It's dead in his chest and still somehow bleeding, entombed in pillar of salt like poor Lot's wife. His head weights a ton, piece of metal like a vice squeezing his temples, but it sends unsettling tendrils of warmth that help with the cold that settled in his bones once he left the warm cradle of Lucifer's palm. There is something ancient crawling down his spine, worming under his skin. Power he shouldn't touch and shouldn't have and has no idea how to use or how to get rid of it. He can't take off the crown. It's stuck to him like a shackle, fingers unable to lift it even one inch. If he had any strength left, he would curse both Lucifer for saddling him with things he himself didn't understand and God for everything else, Ineffable Plan on the forefront. He tastes sulfur and ashes and cloying sweet metal blood where he bit the insides of his cheeks with too sharp teeth.

The kid was warm at his side, a chatter of voice that he answered with vague hums that seemed to be enough for the child that attached himself for some undisclosed reason to his hand. Who clings to a demon, anyway? Ah yes. People who saw him stand stupidly between them and Satan. Oh Somebody…he made a good impression on them, didn't he? First with Gabe and then…He would not get rid of them now. Crowley knew humans. They would find him and try to talk to him now with that 'bound by trauma' excuse. Crowley didn't want to bond. He wanted…

He wanted Aziraphale. 

He wanted his angel. Nothing else, nothing more. 

Just for Aziraphale to not be dead.

The sound came from afar. Sort of...purr, like somewhere close somebody forgot to turn off lawnmower or had the fantasy to use it now in this deluge. Except…it kept getting closer?

Motorbike?

Crowley squinted at the road watching the small shape of a scooter coming closer with loud sound of engine echoing for miles without care. It passed the skeleton of his Bentley, still slowly devoured by flames and stopped few meters from Crowley.

Someone whimpered. It was a soft pained sound of a wounded animal. 

"Are we too late? Darling?" A woman slid from her seat and made her way toward him. "Crowley, is that my sword?"

And then the boy slid from his grasp, did something with his hand like he was pulling tle rabbit out of magician's hat and Aziraphale stood before him clad in his camel coat and old waistcoat and with his hair so pale and curly like a fluffy cloud and familiar press of his mouth when he worried… Crowley threw himself forward, wings and all, any shame or fear long dead and abandoned on the wet ground behind the metal fence of the military base. 

The crown stayed on his head as he bowled Aziraphale down, hands grasping, mouth stealing one soft desperate kiss while his hands cradled that beloved face, before he hid his tears and gathered the soft expanse of the angel's body closer. His nose filled with the smell of old parchment and the sweet and spicy cologne where he pressed in the soft warm skin of Aziraphale's neck. Beige-clad shoulders stiffened under his touch, relaxed, and with a sigh that held nothing but relief Aziraphale's arms pulled him closer until there was no space left.

And if Crowley let himself think a very reluctant 'thank you' toward the unnamed force that let him have that moment, well, nobody has to know.


End file.
